A Bit More On UNCC

Ooh, purty:

Charlotte enters this tournament with the nation's best winning percentage (.825) and the lowest team ERA in Division I (2.31). Senior Adam Mills leads the nation in ERA (1.06) and has won a school-record 13 games this season.

But how seriously to take those numbers? You decide. I'll say this much: lovely team ERA aside, the pitching staff doesn't look all that deep to me. Number two starter Spencer Steedley, for instance, has a .237 BABIP, which is like 100 points below average. Meaning he's been quite fortunate, he's faced a lot of weak-contact-making hitters over the course of the schedule, or both.

Over at Baseball Analysts today there is a roundtable discussion of MLB draft prospects involving a few Baseball America writers. Here's what one had to say about Adam Mills:

Adam Mills has had the best season of any player in college baseball in terms of production, but the Atlantic-10 is probably as bad as it gets this year in college baseball. He's dominating inferior competition with an upper-80s fastball, pitchability, a decent slider and changeup. He's not a threat to go high unless it's to a "Moneyball" kind of team, but the scouts I've talked to about him remain skeptical. Hard to root against the guy, his consistency is amazing. Think he'll go 4-6 round range.

Mills has good peripherals--he's struck out over a batter per inning and has a K:BB ratio north of five--but clearly if his fastball just touches the high-80s, he doesn't possess great stuff. It'll be interesting to see how we handle him.

Sidenote: they go on to talk about Beau Mills, a power hitter who transferred from Fresno State to Lewis-Clark State (an NAIA school) for some reason. At Lewis-Clark, Beau Mills has 33 homers in 57 games and is slugging 1.000 on the season. So he's literally averaging one base per at bat.

A little later in that roundtable discussion, the topic of Andrew Brackman comes up:

Rich: Andrew Brackman. Power forward, power pitcher, or power outage?

John: Pitcher, but he's raw. He's not that great at basketball, really.

Jim: Again, I concur with John. Definitely a pitcher, but he's very raw and not a sure thing. He isn't a Jeff Samardzija, who would have been a second- or third-round pick in this year's NFL draft.

Alan: He has more upside than Samardzija, in my opinion, but I don’t think his mental approach matches his talent, and that might be one reason he hasn't been able to capture his potential quite yet.